


The Art of Carving (or trying to)

by blanchards



Series: Trick or Treat (but mostly treat) [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cute, F/F, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Halloween, Kissing, Long-Term Relationship(s), Love, Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar) in an established relationship, Modern AU, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchards/pseuds/blanchards
Summary: There were two things Mai knew about her girlfriend: 1, that she loved any and everything involving a group craft project and 2, that Mai herself would go to the ends of the fucking earth to ensure said craft projects were a success.In which Ty Lee wants to carve pumpkins, Mai wants to watch her girlfriend actually try to cut a portrait of a dog into an oversized squash, and everyone overestimates their artistic abilities.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: Trick or Treat (but mostly treat) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994242
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	The Art of Carving (or trying to)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This part of my 'Trick or Treat (but mostly treat)' series featuring 3 Halloween stories around Sokka/Zuko, Mai/Ty Lee and Suki/Yue. It was also written at 10pm after three glasses of wine, and is mostly pure fluff and flirting. Rated T for kissing and swearing (SFW).

There are roughly, Mai would estimate, a thousand uses for the household knife.

Ranging from your every day cooking expenditures to slasher-level home invasion defence, to crafting to DIY, to stabbing fruitlessly into a pumpkin at three in the afternoon. The latter, she happened to have an increased knowledge of as of forty minutes prior when one had been laid in front of her.

She wouldn’t consider herself an artist – sure her abilities advanced farther than a stickman but she wasn’t talented enough to consider herself an expert, and she wasn’t misguided enough to mistake her work for something better than it was. Glancing over to her left, met with a sheer glee on the face beside her, she hazarded a guess that Ty Lee did not share her sentiment.

If you asked, Mai would deny the blush that graced her cheeks whenever her girlfriend complimented the design she painstakingly carved away at. She certainly wouldn’t be kind enough to disclose the way her heart fluttered whenever she heard a compliment from her. Mai hadn’t even intended for it to go this far, to expend this much effort chiselling away at a vegetable. But of all the thoughts and things she'd deny or later claim weren’t true: at the very top of the list, was any notion that she would carve a thousand pumpkins if it meant Ty Lees bright laugh never ended.

There were two things she knew about her girlfriend: 1, that she loved any and everything involving a group craft project and 2, that Mai herself would go to the ends of the fucking earth to ensure said craft projects were a success. To any ordinary outsider, she may be assumed as callous or cold, but around the perky, excitable brunette beside her, the truth could not be further from it. She’d painted enough mugs and baked enough clay charms to know that. The cool exterior she flaunted may appear impermeable, but really there was a very simple antidote. Genuinely. That antidote had deep brown eyes, an infectious smile, an undoubtable love for the colour pink and had giddily arrived at their apartment door with two pumpkins in tow an hour earlier.

And that’s how they’d ended up seated at a kitchen table carving out orange chunks, the only noise to be heard for miles around being Ty Lee’s gentle humming, only interrupted by slight huffs of frustration as she realised carving a puppy into a rounded, inch-thick object was not the easy task she’d deemed it to be. She found this unfair. Mai found it adorable.

She sighed and pressed her forehead against the table. She turned her face sideways, aiming it towards Mai, tell-tale enthusiastic smile still refusing to budge.

“Not as easy as they make it look on TV, huh?” she grinned. Mai offered a small, fond, smile in return. She glanced over.

“That’s a dog?” she asked, polite but with an edge of mirth. Ty Lee’s face faltered for a moment, worrying her that she may have gone too far – Mai’s expertise always did lie with dry humour, but then her own smile widened. She sat up.

“Oh yeah? And you call that a... a… actually what _is_ that?”

Again, Mai would deny it, but Ty Lee’s puzzled expression was unfairly adorable, her brow furrowed, tongue lightly poked out, you could practically see the neurons travelling through her brain, searching for a kind way to express utter confusion. Mai placed a hand over her heart in mock offence. She watched her girlfriend blush, again – insufferably cute, and scramble to retrace her steps.

“Oh!” she feigned realisation, “It’s a- a scary man!”

And whilst it’s true that Mai had something of a reputation for a calculated, bleak personality, it was clear as day that the laughter bubbling from her scarlet painted lips at that moment was anything but.

“ _Bram Stoker’s Dracula_. You were close.”

For all her soft exterior and love of fluffy objects, you’d be a fool to paint Ty Lee as anything other than intelligent. She was extremely bright, often able to use people’s misconceptions of her against them. Upon first meeting her, it was this very quality that had forced Mai’s chest into a sensation she wasn’t entirely confident about. Up until then, it had been safe to say that she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d be looking for in the person she’d want to spend forever with. But “delighting in the ability to tell narrow-minded fucks just how off base they were about her whilst handing their asses to them simultaneously” had just been added to the job description. It was with great disappointment, however, she had to add that although in any other retrospect Ty Lee championed pop culture knowledge – she _hated_ horror movies.

The first indicator of this tragedy – and it _was_ a tragedy – had been on their first date. Okay, maybe Mai hadn’t realised it to be a date, after all this was her childhood friend, and although it’s true they may not have seen each other in years and perhaps they were sat a little closer than what would have been entirely platonic – how was she to know? But it had been Halloween and she’d already made plans to sit inside with wine and chocolate and watch classic horror movies, and she was sure as hell that even if Ty Lee was undeniably pretty, with a light that rivalled the fucking sun itself, nothing was coming in between her and her evening. The Halloween tradition had always been something she’d carried out alone, and intended it to stay that way - so of course when Ty Lee had beamed up at her, something indescribably beautiful shining in her eyes, and asked to come, well it was as much a surprise to Mai as it was to anyone else that she’d agreed.

The second surprise of the evening had come in the form of just how close in proximity they were sat (and the third had been how Mai didn’t hate this development, not even a little, in fact, she was cautiously sure that she may have even enjoyed it). As not everything in the universe can be unpredictable, it had seemed fitting that despite every other revelation that evening, true to form Ty Lee had discovered her absolute detest of horror; at first it was the gore; then it was the monsters; then the animal deaths, which, okay – nobody likes to see the dog die; and before the evening was half over Mai found her clinging onto her arm with her head firmly planted behind a pillow.

If it hadn’t been incredibly endearing - perhaps it would have been annoying. If Ty Lee hadn’t slowly lifted her chin to meet Mai’s lips after their 6th interval and kissed her in a way that made every other Halloween marathon pale in comparison - perhaps she would have cared.

Snapping out of her thoughts, her eyes wandered over to where the culprit in question was stood, crouched down slightly in front of a kitchen cabinet, scouring it for something.

“Hey. I already told you, I don’t think ‘a sharper knife’ is the solution here, kitten.” Mai offered, half-amused, as Ty Lee practically fell headfirst into the cupboard in her pursuit. She offered no response.

“It doesn’t even look that bad, honestly. Maybe if you just added another cut here and maybe a whisker here, wait, do dogs have whiskers? I was always more of a cat person- Ty Lee-” she spun back around, “what are you doing?”

She seemed to tune back in just as her girlfriend bounced back towards her holding three small items. She peppered a gentle kiss onto the Mai’s slightly-open-in-confusion mouth in passing. She tried very hard not to let the blood she felt rush up her neck become too apparent.

“Candles?” she raised an eyebrow, taking one of the objects. “Aren’t these banned in the lease?”

Ty Lee mirrored her expression, a playful smirk accompanying it, “Aren’t serial killer level knife collections?”

She narrowed her eyes, allowing the ghost of what was hiding as a much bigger smile spread onto her face. “Touché.”

“You’re all done then?” She asked, watching as the brunette re-seated herself beside her, pulling the chair towards her slightly so she could wrap her arm around Ty Lee’s shoulders. She pressed a gentle kiss into her temple. Mai swore she could feel the grin on the other girls face from below her.

Ty Lee nodded, now fiddling with the latch of a tiny, pink (obviously) lighter.

“Allow me.”

She gently closed her hand over the plastic rectangle, taking it into her own grasp, igniting the flame easily, despite the stiff contraption. She watched her girlfriend frown at her through her peripheral vision.

“Lighters… Knives… should I be afraid of you?” It was obviously a joke, but Mai still nearly barked in disbelief. She pulled the shorter girl closer to her, pushing her own lips into the pouting, glossy pink pair below.

“I think you’re the last person who should be afraid of me.” She spoke, still pressed against her mouth. The blush gently flushing onto Ty Lee’s cheeks was all but subtle.

“Because you love me?” She teased, kissing Mai’s bottom lip back.

“Because you’d kick my ass in a heartbeat.”

She felt a giggle burst out between them as Ty Lee turned her head and rested it into the cruck of her shoulder. The tickle of humming against her neck sent an involuntary shiver through her which, naturally, only spurred the laughter on further. Rolling her eyes, and suddenly becoming acutely aware of the flame warming her hand, Mai made the executive decision to light the candles before she accidentally burnt her fingerprints off. She dropped them into their respective homes with a gentle _plop_.

* * *

“You know that I know who Dracula is, right?” Ty Lee’s gentle voice broke through the comfortable silence after a while. Mai rolled her eyes, fondly nudging her shoulder.

“Considering that today is not your first day on earth, I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” she frowned at her pumpkin, “Is it really that unrecognisable then?”

There was a pause, something unspoken hanging in the air, Mai turned to her girlfriend with an inquisitive eyebrow raised, arching it even further when the expression on her face started to look an awful lot like amusement.

“Mai.” She started, clearly trying (but failing) to keep a straight face. “It’s a really good portrait.” And it was if she was being honest: specific lines and features copied down intricately, Mai had to admit she’d impressed even herself. Ty Lee continued, laughter still threatening her composure “And I know you’re the horror expert here- and- and I hate those movies, I really do - you know this – so I’m not trying to overstep my boundaries here if I’ve missed something-”

“For fucks sake Ty Lee, spit it out.” She huffed, eyes still flickering back and forth from her girlfriend to the carving, trying to reach the punchline herself before she could hear it. Ty Lee grinned up at her.

“Isn’t Dracula supposed to have fangs?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment, if you like, and feel free to check out the other stories in the series if that's your thing. As always I'm on tumblr @[tysukis](http://www.tysukis.tumblr.com). Happy Halloween!


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